Author: martinsimpsonwriting

So I’m sitting in my book-lined study, listening to Bach’s Cello Suite 1 in G, with T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” open in front of me.

Because I’m classy like that.

Eliot’s familiar last lines go, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

In this most schadenfreude-tastic of weeks, I want to borrow Eliot’s theme, and focus this column on Things That Have Ended with both a Bang and a Whimper:

First, let’s get the easy joke out of the way — Kamala’s “job interviews” with corrupt and crusty old Willie Brown.   Bang. Whimper.  Here’s your no-show job, Kamala.

Second… of course… it’s Mueller time!

I know that CO and COers have already done an admirable job with this the story, but I can’t resist a few comments of my own.   And to properly set the mood for that, I must ask you to go to Youtube and call up the video of Ray Charles and the Voices of Jubilation singers doing, “Oh Happy Day.”  Please use that as your soundtrack as you read the rest of this column.

(Also, as a bonus: if I were somehow turned into an African-American woman in a red dashiki, my expressions while I was channel surfing the MSM Monday would look exactly like the lady at 2:13 in that video.) (And if that sounds too far-fetched to get your mind around, consider that I am a lot closer to being that woman than Liz Warren is to being an American Indian.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

First, does it make me a bad person if I’m enjoying watching the disappointed lefty true believers cycling between shocked despair and full-blown denial in the wake of Mueller-geddon?

If so, I’m a very, very bad person.  I surfed from one channel to another, savoring the stammering, yammering boneheads.  John Brennan is backpedaling like a scared cornerback lined up across from Willie Gault in 1985.  (Yes, that’s a 34-year old Bears reference.  What’s your point?)

Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo – from the “Help! I’m trapped in an airport with no other viewing options!” network – wobbled around like they’d been pole-axed.  Lemon started a rambling sentence about Russian collusion that somehow ended with “…the easy fix, is to just release his tax returns.”

Um, what now?  Does Lemon “think” (scare quotes intended) that Trump had a write-off labeled “collusion expenses?”

I saw the headline that Maxine Waters was having a meltdown over it, and of course my first thought was, “Don’t over-react — her face always looks like that.”  But when I watched a little video, and saw that the melting has indeed spread from her face to her brain.  In a rambling response, she said, “This isn’t the end of anything.” (pause) “Well, it is the end of the Mueller report…”

Yep!

One of my favorite moments was seeing CNN president Jeff Zucker defending his network’s getting everything wrong for two years.  (If you’re not sure which one Zucker is, he looks like a dishonest, giant human thumb, with glasses on it.)  In an email to the NYT, he pronounced himself “very comfortable” with CNN’s coverage of the non-existent collusion conspiracy.  (Which tells you that he is a very much opposable thumb.) (HA!)

His best line: “We are not investigators.  We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.”

Hey Thumbkin, if you don’t do any investigating, how do you learn the facts that it is your job to report?  Do you just stand on a street corner in Atlanta until some bum who’s out of methadone stumbles up to you and whispers out of the side of his mouth that he saw Trump groping Natasha Badanov while her husband Boris conveyed marching orders from Putin?

(And before you can object, I know that “bum” is politically incorrect language.  But I can’t keep up with the terminology.  Is “vagrant” acceptable?  How about “hobo?”  “Member of the Poop Map Contributor Community?” “The Democrat Base?”  Someone please help me with this.)

Anyway, Tom Thumb says that it’s not his reporters’ job to investigate anything.  They just report whatever facts come through from the fillings in their teeth, I guess.

One last hilarious detail: since the Mueller report came out, CNN’s ratings have cratered, and I’m sure that Zuck-ster and his team are sitting around a big table, trying to understand.  I mean, they’re not investigating, or anything.  But they’re looking at each other with vacant, Cuomo-esque stares, wondering what this all means.

I’ll tell you what it means: One, two, three, four, we deplorables declare a thumb war!

Third in our “bang and whimper” list is the latest in the Jussie “don’t call me Jessie” Smollett case.  The inexplicable decision to depart from all usual procedure and dismiss the rock-solid hate crime hoax charges against the Trump-hating obscure actor appears to be a whimpering end to the case.   But the black police chief and the law enforcement rank and file are furious, and even Rahm “dead-shark-eyes”  Emanuel has felt compelled to blast the dismissal.  With any luck, another shoe will be dropping with a bang shortly.

Fourth, the execrable Southern Poverty Law Center has been imploding over the last several weeks, and it couldn’t happen to a better bunch of political arsonists.   Creepy founder Morris Dees was fired on March 14^th with a vague statement to the effect that he had “failed to meet standards.”   Ten days later, president Richard Cohen resigned, and rumors about endemic racism and sexism in the SPLC headquarters for decades are running rampant.

In other words, so far two big bangs, and a chorus of whimpers at SPLC.  By the way, that misnamed group has always reminded me of the old saying about the Holy Roman Empire – it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.  The Southern Poverty Law Center mostly aimed to raise funds from guilty Northern liberals, accumulated great wealth, and was totally lawless.  Good riddance!

Fifth, no bang-and-whimper list would be complete without the immolation of the Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.  (Insert your own Stormy Daniels joke here.) (Um, maybe “insert” was not the right word.)  A year ago this guy was flying high, appearing on CNN hourly (and thus being seen by literally dozens of people every day), and being taken seriously by some Dems as a potential presidential contender.

And now, he’s been fired by Stormy, kicked out of his law offices, and charged with multiple counts of extortion.  Which means that he would now be no better than the fourth-most-impressive Dem presidential candidate.  Oh, how the degraded have fallen… one or two steps lower than he already was.

Sixth, March 26^th was the best day in the US Senate in decades.  Cocaine Mitch McConnell finally forced a vote on the Green New Deal (also known informally as the “Titanic-Hindenberg-Edsel-New Coke-Dumpster-Fire-Act of 2019”).

The result?  0 yeas, 57 nays and 43 voted “present.”

So close!

“But Martin,” I can hear you saying, “Hasn’t every Democrat senator running for president praised the Green New Deal, ranting that if we don’t pass it, we’re all going to, like, die in only, like, 12 years or something?”

Yes.  Yes they have.  And yet every last one of them — Hillary 1 and 2 (Klobuchar and Gillibrand), Squanto Warren, Bernie, Kamala, Spartacus – voted “present.”

Along with, of course, every other spineless leftist in the Senate, including Schumer, Dick “nobody ever calls him Richard” Durbin, Richard “everybody secretly calls him Dick” Blumenthal and the other assorted Merkleys and Markeys.

Not since a herd of squishy RINOs got elected promising to end Obamacare and build a wall has a political party so betrayed their voters.  Let the lefty whimpering begin!

 

Finally, I’m happy to end with a story that is all bang and no whimper: the Israeli response to Hamas terrorists firing rockets into Israel.  When the fine folks from the Religion of Peace™ managed to reach Tel Aviv with a super-peaceful rocket (result: shrapnel wounds to 7 civilians, including a woman in her sixties, a 12-year-old girl, and two infants.), Israel responded with some vigorous diplomacy.

HA! I kid.  They conducted 80 air strikes against dozens of terror installations in Gaza, leveling most of them.  My favorite line from the reporting involved the administrative headquarters of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which before the strikes was a three-story building. (Now it is less than one story.)  The line referred to the building as Hamas’ “secret headquarters.”

Secret’s out, Ismail!

What’s the over/under on how long it takes Ilhan Omar to criticize Israel for attacking an innocent terrorist headquarters building?

What a week!   Mueller nukes the conspiracy fever dreams of the left, Avenatti heads for the Big House instead of the White House, and Morris Dees gets the poop-map-contributor’s rush.  (Get it?) And then the Dem senators get a chance to vote for the vital, “stop the end of the world now” act that they sponsored, and the whole rotten lot of them vote Present!

Look at the end of the “Oh Happy Day” video again, because I’ve stopped identifying with the lady in the red dashiki.  (Don’t mis-gender me!) Watch when the big bald guy escorts Ray Charles away from the organ toward the end of the song, while Ray rocks that mile-wide smile, pats both side of his face, hugs himself, and does that weird little squatting, knee-slapping dance.

Call me Ray “Martacus” Charles, because that was me this week, dancing around my living room watching the MSM imploding, while Cassie the Wonder Dog pranced around me, barking with joy.

I have been spending some free time pondering the possible Democratic presidential tickets.

I know what you’re thinking: is he still on those narcotics?  (If you missed the story, I recently had a pain-med adventure that involved a dentist who literally went at me with hammer and tongs.) (But at least it wasn’t a hammer and sickle, which is what we’ll get if Bernie gets control over our health care system.) (HA!)

I am thinking about the various combinations of Dem Prez/VP combos because I find them all fascinating.   And by “fascinating,” I mean simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.

I trust that the sophisticated CO nation understands the horrifying part.  If any of this crop of ne’er-do-wells wins next year, tuning in to that inauguration is going to be like watching a baby carriage rolling in slow motion directly into the path of a speeding 18-wheeler on the interstate.

(For those of you who may not have majored in Interpretive Dream Symbolism, in this analogy the baby carriage would be my beloved United States, the baby would be an actual, adorable human baby – although she’d be clutching all of my hopes and dreams in one of her pudgy little fists, and my 401K in the other – and the speeding semi would be the doomsday administration of whichever leftist loon the Dems and MSM — but I repeat myself — managed to drag across the finish line.)

But as horrible as the general election would be if the Dems were to win, their primary debates are going to put the “high” in “high-larious.”  I can’t wait!

The black ones will be sneering at the white ones, and the women will be scowling at the men, and Beta will come rolling in on a skateboard like a doofus.  Bernie will lose a hearing aid, and Biden will grope a moderator. Either Amy Klobuchar or Kirsten Gillibrand will call Liz Warren “Sitting Bull” under her breath, and because Lizzie can’t tell the two of them apart, she’ll start calling them “Hillary 1” and “Hillary 2.”

Which will be fighting words, so with any luck, a three-way white-lady wrestling match will break out.  Cory Booker will command them to stop, but as he stands astride them with his hands on his hips, yelling, “I am Spart-“ he’ll be interrupted by one cankle shooting out of the scrum and catching him in the crotch, after which he’ll hobble off stage like Spartacus’ cowardly manservant, a character so nondescript that his name is unknown to history.

Harris will sidle up to Bernie and offer to sleep with him if he’ll put her on his ticket as VP – a political stratagem that is known in California political circles as “pulling a Kamala” – but he’ll be shaking his hearing aid in frustration, and won’t hear a word she says.

Biden will trip over Beto’s skateboard and fall into Bernie, and both of them will immediately break a hip.  Beto will take advantage by stepping through the mass of writhing idiots to the microphone, where he’ll begin gesticulating wildly as he recites a word salad made up of equal parts of randomly selected paragraphs from Jack Kerouac, a madlib of socialist talking points, and AOC’s dream journal (but I repeat myself).

It’s going to be like 4 months of Christmas, mixed with Wrestlemania 25 (“This Time It’s Personal – and the Personal is Political!”) and April Fool’s Day!

Once the primaries are over, and the Democrats have chosen a “winner” (and never have scare quotes been any scarier), the VP derby will begin.

Traditional political analysts, when mulling presidential tickets, consider ideology (a hard-liner and a centrist might be the most electable combination), age (a combination of older/experienced works well with younger/energetic), or geography (a VP from a key battleground state might tip the balance if he could bring along his home state).

But not me.   Because at times I’ve been called @hilariousgenius, and at other times Martacus, and at still other times, Martino.  (Okay, that was only in high school Spanish class, where I may have been called a lot of other names too.  But I wouldn’t have known that.) (Because I don’t speak a word of Spanish.)

But I have NEVER been called a traditional political analyst.

Which is why I have my own, idiosyncratic ways of choosing a dream ticket.

For example, I am tempted to pull for the Whitest Ticket In History combo: Warren/Gillibrand.

Or the best alliteration ticket:  Biden/Beto.

Or the least ethnic putatively African-American ticket: Kamala/Spartacus.

Or the double-barreled ethnic fraud ticket: Beto/Warren. (an Irish Hispanic and a translucent Iroquois) (#wemustneverstopmockingbothofthem)

Or the “never-worked-an-honest-day-in-their-lives” ticket: Sanders/Beto.  (But also, really, most of them.)

 

But perhaps my favorite dark horse ticket would come down to the coolest-sounding pairing: Hickenlooper/Buttigieg.

“Hickenlooper” is so goofy-sounding that I admire the guy just for having any career at all.  Because a name has traditionally made a huge difference in how someone is perceived.

You expect a woman named “Sophia Loren” or “Brigitte Bardot” to be smoking hot.  You expect a guy named “Michael Stonebreaker” to play linebacker at Notre Dame.  You expect someone named “Albert Einstein” to be the intellectual opposite of AOC.   (Also, in a coincidence that I’m almost too modest to point out, you expect a guy named “Martin Simpson” to be a smoking hot, linebacker/genius.) (Take that, tropical-disease-name-sounding Idris Alba!)

It usually works in the opposite direction, too.

Nobody was going to watch a tough-guy western starring Marion Morrison, so he became John Wayne.  Women weren’t likely to swoon over Archibald Leach, so he became Cary Grant.   No one was going to vote for Willard Romney, so he became Mitt.   (As it turns out, not enough people voted for him anyway, but that’s probably because “Mitt” is not such a great name.  Also, he’d had his spine surgically replaced with a slinky, which did NOT help.)

And before you can raise the Arnold Schwarzenegger objection: he’s the exception that proves the rule.

(Fun Historical Naming Fact Digression: Hitler’s dad was the illegitimate son of a woman named “Shicklgruber,” and he and Adolph came very close to being stuck with that name.  Which would have changed history, because no gang of rowdy Germans in a beer hall could ever have plausibly been induced to shout out the salute, “Heil Schiklgruber!”)

Where was I?

Oh yeah: Hickenlooper’s little buddy, Buttigieg.

Wow.  I don’t know anything about the guy, except three things: He grew up gay.  In the Midwest.  And his last name started with “butt.”

Therefore, he’s got to be tough as nails, and I want to like the guy. Not since the great Johnny Cash told the story of the Boy Named Sue has there been a name as guaranteed to get a youngster toughened up.

So as I was writing the above, I thought that I’d research Buttigieg a little, because maybe he’d be a Dem who might not be awful as president…

Aaaannnnnndddd nope!

First of all, I was devastated to learn that his last name is disappointingly pronounced something like, “Boot-edge-edge.” (Though I’d probably say that too, if my name had an obvious “butt” in it.)  At least his first name isn’t “Jeh.”   (Because if you spell someone’s name to look like “Jeh Butt-a-gig” but insist that it’s pronounced “Jay Boot-edge-edge,” I don’t care if he’s the newly discovered son of Ronald Reagan – I’m out!)

Secondly, he’s another cookie-cutter leftist, supporting the usual disaster-producing policies: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, forced increases to the minimum wage, etc.

So we’re back to square one: all of the Dem candidates are as crazy as outhouse rodentia, as we used to say in my small Midwestern town, when parents were in earshot.

But the primaries are going to be all the more entertaining because of it.

Hickenlooper/Buttigieg 2020!

 

So March is off to an iffy start.  I just had a little visit with an oral surgeon who removed a cracked tooth.  If I weren’t a stoic, Spartan type of guy – as some of you may know, my close friends often call me Martacus – I would guess that he used a mining drill, and possibly a few shaped charges.  There was definitely smoke involved.

I’m going to end up getting an implant several months from now, and to that end, the dentist put in a cadaver bone graft.  And yes, before you can ask, I checked with him beforehand to confirm that the cadaver involved was not from Egypt.  Because I don’t want to suddenly find myself slurring my words, and wildly gesticulating with dessicated mummy hands, going all Nancy Pelosi.

At one point, the assistant warned me that the doc was going to be “manually raising the sinus floor” (which has to be one of the greatest euphemisms ever), and to that end, I would hear some – and I quote – “tapping.”

This was followed by some concussive hammering on my upper jaw with what I can only assume was a 24-ounce waffle-faced framing hammer.  (I’ve done a lot of home renovations over the last 20 years, and I stand by that guess.)

I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank a benevolent God for inventing anesthetic.  Because although I was bouncing around in the chair like Ted Kennedy’s date on the ride home, I didn’t feel a thing.  Not until 3 hours later.

Anyway, long story short, I’m taking an assortment of antibiotics and some sweet pain meds.  And I’ve always found that the best time to write about the actions of various leftist boneheads on the national scene is when I’m hopped up on goofballs.  So here goes…

I’m sure you all really enjoyed the Oscars, and neither did I.  Instead of watching the cavalcade of America-hating prima donnas, I checked out the Daily Wire podcast about it, on which Ben Shapiro summed it up best: gay black guy story beat out several regular black guy movies and several other regular gay person movies.   And evil Cheney movie was nominated, but couldn’t win due to a shortage of disabled transgendered people of color in the cast.

My favorite part was that after the leftist witch-hunters drove off anyone willing to host, the anemic ratings actually went up about 9%.  I just like the message that that sends to Jimmy “waah” Kimmel: after two years of you doing the hosting job, you were replaced by nobody.  And nobody did a better job.

Terrible bartender and juvenile thinker AOC continues to amuse.  She’s lost her patience with people always picking at tiny little details that she gets wrong – such as $93 trillion deficits, and the fact that you can’t build a railroad to Hawaii, and the fact that you can’t replace cars with a national system of thousands of miles of slip-and-slides, and that there’s not supposed to be any Murphy’s Oil Soap in a scotch and soda.

She finally snapped in an interview.  Responding to skepticism about her Green New Deal, she threw down the gauntlet, demanding to know why no one else has come up with a plan to fix the world’s climate.  Because I wasn’t there, no one said, “Because real scientists are debating nearly every aspect of the myriad factors that influence global temperatures, and what steps humans might be able to take to affect even a few of those factors.  Also, a planet’s ecosystem is a little more complicated than a Long Island Iced Tea.  Which, by the way, is not supposed to have lye and pepper in it, so please take this back.”

She worked herself up into a perfect, pre-teen snit, sneering that “no one else has even tried” to deal with the climate, and ending in a finger waving, “like”-infested rant:  “So people are like, oh, it’s unrealistic.  Oh, it’s vague. Oh, it doesn’t address this little minute thing.  And I’m like, YOU try!  You do it!  Cause you’re not.  You’re not.  So until you do it, I’m the boss!  How bout dat?”

You’ve got to see it and hear it to get the full inanity of it all.  She’s like that “Cass me ousside, how bout dat?” girl from some daytime talk show.  Only she has the ability to propose legislation, and deter multi-billion dollar companies from opening a branch in a blue state.  (HA!  Take that, Cuomo and Schumer!  The illiterate and innumerate chickens are coming home to ROOST! (How bout dat?)

And the other fresh faces in the new Democratic congress aren’t faring much better.  In particular, two new Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have stumbled from one anti-Semitic and anti-American gaffe after another, including mocking Mike Pence’s Christian faith, and altering a map to show the state of Israel replaced by Palestine.

If you throw in scandal-prone abuser Keith Ellison, the Democrats have gone 0-for-Islam so far.

 

But even considering all of this leftist smorgasbord of stupid, my two favorite lefty stories from last month came from lesser known Democrats.

First, Lamar, South Carolina mayor Darnell Byrd-McPherson, an African-American female (despite being named “Darnell”) has been on the lookout for MAGA-hat wearing deplorables committing hate crimes.  On February 7^th, this knucklehead announced in a press release that the racists had struck:

“The incident happened last night. Even though I drove my car today, I thought it was pollen. My husband and our neighbor noticed the cars looked like someone had spray painted on both our vehicles, which were parked in our front yard.

As an aside, during the 70s, crosses were burned in the yard of our home when my mother was involved with the civil rights movement. On this very same corner in this very same front yard!

Again, we are grateful the person or persons did not try to take our lives but the culprits will be identified and prosecuted.

Love conquers hate and my husband and I refuse to be intimidated by those who perpetrated this act of vandalism which I classify as an act of hatred. ”

Byrd-McPherson referenced how bills are being introduced to address hate crimes in the South Carolina General Assembly. She added hate crimes are on the rise in the state.

The incident remains under investigation.”

The give-away is in the first line: something that appeared to be pollen was found on her car.  Naturally, she immediately thought about Klansmen (whom I must point out were Democrats) burning crosses on her yard.  As one does. From there it’s only a hop, skip and a smear to people trying to kill her, and her not being intimidated, and by the way she’s introducing more hate crime legislation.

As it turned out – you guessed it – there was pollen on her car.  In South Carolina.  During pollination season.

But don’t give up, Darnell.  How do you know that your property is NOT surrounded by racist trees and shrubs?  Trying to kill you, or hold you down, or mess up your cars?  Not to mention making you sneeze and wheeze?

In fact, only a few minutes of research revealed to me that in your region, you are surrounded by such suspicious trees as WHITE pines, WHITE firs, and WHITEbark pines.  Not to mention the Torch Pine!  I don’t think I need to remind you who was fond of carrying torches: Democrat klansmen!

And don’t get me started on lynchberry bushes or Jim Crow kudzu!

So look alive, mayor.  I’m already hearing rumors that many white supremacist trees are colluding in a conspiracy – reports indicate that this will happen in October — to drop millions of leaves on the heads of unsuspecting minorities, possibly injuring them, and definitely clogging their gutters.

 

Not to be outdone by idiot leftist politicians, idiot leftist vandals also had their moment to shine in February.   This story happened in North Carolina, where some unknown miscreants continued the recent trend of vandalizing statues of Civil War figures by trying to light a statue of Robert E. Lee on fire.

They encountered two problems.  First, the statue is made of marble, which is not famous for being flammable.  Fun fact: of all of the buildings that burned to the ground in the great Chicago Fire, roughly zero of them were made of marble.  Which is why you may not have been taught in school about how Mrs. Leary’s cow was slipping and sliding around in her marble barn when the fire started.

Second, it turns out that the carved marble figure was not in fact Civil War general Robert E. Lee, but World War II Major General William C. Lee, who was known as the “Father of the US Airborne.”

To be fair to the vandals, both Lees are white males who identified as males, and to many idiots, we all look alike.

On the other hand, Robert E. Lee had a cool beard, and wore a Civil War era uniform, and is virtually always depicted on a horse.  Whereas William C. Lee is clean shaven, wearing a WWII uniform (with a 20^th century military hat, uniform and boots) and is not sitting on a horse.

Note for those who may have learned their history from blue-state, unionized public school teachers: the Civil War did NOT happen in the 20^th century.  Also, one of the main reasons for the Confederate defeat was NOT how ineffective their air force was.  Finally, surprisingly few WW II airborne assaults were conducted by soldiers parachuting out of the back of airplanes on horseback.

Although it does make me smile to picture a squad of German soldiers in Normandy on June 6^th, looking up in terror at a sky filled with airborne troops carrying six shooters, on the backs of descending horses with murder in their equine eyes.

“Mein Gott!” I pictured those Germans screaming, “a million American bad asses are descending on the back of a million Hillary Clintons.  Beware the hooves and cankles!  We surrender!”

Okay, I think that last paragraph can only mean one thing: it’s time for me to take more narcotics.

Martacus out!

Several events have started me thinking more about fathers lately.  For one, my mom was down for a visit last week. She’s 80 now, and dad has been gone for 4 years, which makes the time we get to spend with her even more precious.  We never get together without thinking about him a lot, and the great legacy he left for us.

On the other end of the spectrum, my youngest daughter turns 17 next week, and that shocking indication of the passing of time has a way of sobering one up.  It’s a cliché for a reason: it seems like just a year ago she was a defenseless infant, and just a week ago she was a prickly pre-teen.  And now when I have a tech question about my website or cell phone or wifi, I go to her, and she condescends to help me.  Plus, I get to try out some jokes for my column on her, which means I get to see some world-class eye rolling. (On the downside, she has been as reluctant as my wife to address me as either “@hilariousgenius” or “Martacus.” Which is disappointing.)

Regular CO readers have heard of some of my great parenting techniques, but for new arrivals, here are a few tips.

First, to be an adequate father, you don’t have to do that much: marry the woman you are going to have kids with, then stick around, earn a little, love them, don’t vote for leftists.  (That last one is not just for dads – it’s a requirement for all functional adults.)  If you’ve got daughters, keep them off the pole.  If you’ve got sons, don’t let them play soccer.  It’s not that hard.

To be a world-class dad, I would suggest devising a few additional monkey tricks for the kids that you teach them when they are very tiny, and then have them perform those for visitors.  That gives them self-esteem.

For example, in addition to my call-and-response routine with my first daughter when she was still in diapers (I’d say, apropos of any terrible story on the news when we were together, “Who do we blame that on?” and she’d respond with an adorable, “The Democrats!”), I also came up with a couple of other crowd-pleasers.

When I asked her, “Which is your favorite of Aristotle’s logical fallacies?” I taught her to say, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”  (This usually came out “procto hoc,” which is close enough.)  I’d follow up with, “What does that mean in English?” To which she would reply, “After this, therefore because of this.”

My closer would be to ask her, “When you are on the court, what kind of Supreme Court Justice will you be?”  She would answer with, “A strict constructionist!”

Her pronunciation wasn’t always perfect when she was two, but the answer still always killed.  The only exception was when she spoiled the moment after her answer by pointing to her diaper and saying, “I made poop.”

But I saved the day by pointing out that that was in fact her eerily accurate Ruth Bader Ginsburg impression.   Then I said, “Now do your Hillary Clinton!”  And she’d screw her adorable little face up into a frown and screech, “CAW, CAW, CAW!” at the top of her lungs.

Good times.

But enough about my terrific parenting skills.  I’d like to point to another dad who is doing it right: Donald Harris, father of Kamala Harris.

Hear me out.

I know that your first instinct is that he probably failed as a father.  He split up with her mom years ago, and although Kamala did manage to stay off the pole, she did something arguably much worse, sleeping with creepy old (married) Willie Brown to launch her career.

And anyone whose child ends up in this dementia of Democratic candidates (hat tip to, I think, John Gabris?  And all the other COers who chimed in with collective nouns for the Dem hopefuls) has been a less than super successful parent.

On the other hand, in response to one of her recent idiotic interviews (you need a scorecard to keep track with this bunch), he displayed the nuclear option of fatherhood: public shaming.

Some idiotic radio interviewer asked Kamala if she has smoked pot, she responded, “Half my family’s from Jamaica.  Are you kidding me?”

This answer was part of a painfully awkward pattern of leftists trying to appeal to millennials by pretending to be young and hip.   Hillary pretended that she carries hot sauce everywhere she goes, and she once said, “I’m just chillin’ in Cedar Rapids,” with a straight face. Squanto Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher) pretended that she likes to crack open a cold one in her kitchen like a real-life Peter Griffin. RBG pretends that she’s a feminist spokesperson, and that she has a pulse.

In the same vein, Kamala came out with an execrable “mood mix” selection of music, and claimed that back in college, she used to get high listening to Snoop and Tupac songs.  (Fact check: those two haven’t ever actually produced anything that could technically be called “songs.” Also, neither of them produced an album until 6 years after Kamala graduated from college.) (So liar, liar, big floppy rasta hat on fire.”)

Anyway, Kamala’s dad was not happy with his daughter’s crass reference to the heavy-toking Jamaican stereotype.   He wrote a public letter saying, “My dear departed grandmothers…, as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected…with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in pursuit of identity politics.”

Ouch!  Daddy no like!

I love this for two reasons: he called her out on the kind of pernicious racial stereotyping the leftists deploy against conservatives but never pay a price for themselves.  And he also slammed her for playing identity politics, which I think is one of the most destructive trends in our public life right now.

So I salute you, Mr. Harris.  But I have to confess that I’m not as upset as you are that Kamala is a pot-smoking joy seeker.

I just wish she wasn’t a pot-smoking office seeker!

Martacus out.

(See.  I can be as faux hip as any Dem candidate.) (If I had a mike, I’d drop it.)

The responses to my last column once again prove that the CO nation is full of some witty people, with impeccable taste.

You all answered the call with some more suggestions for a collective noun to describe Dem presidential candidates.  A “dementia of Democrats” and a “failure of Democrats” were particular favorites, though I can’t discount the alliterative fun of “clown car of candidates” and “gaggle of goofballs.”

The positive response to the title of “Martacus” is growing on me.  Just this morning, I was standing in front of a full-length mirror in a toga (as one does), testing the sound of it.  Cassie the Wonder Dog stood by watching, and she seemed impressed.

On the other hand, John Gabris suggested that the ultimate test of the new name will be whether my wife will use it.  Early results are NOT encouraging.  On the other hand, she has inexplicably not taken to calling me “@hilariousgenius,” either, no matter how nicely I ask.  So I may have to disregard her opinion on this, as on a few other things.

We’ve got a new addition to the declared field of Dem candidates…and never has a “dementia” of Democrats more aptly applied than it does to Bernie Sanders.  The socialist dictator-enthusiast threw his hat into the ring on the 19^th.  Comically, it was a bicorne hat (like the one Napoleon wore), which was very fashionable in the early 19^th century, when Bernie was a young man.

(Speaking of which, I know that “octogenarian” describes people in their 80s, and “nonagenarian” people in their 90s.  But what word describes a guy in his late 100s like Bernie?  I want to say “centurion,” but I know that that’s one of those Roman soldiers.)  (Speaking of which, call me Martacus!)

(See what I mean?  It’s growing on you, too.)

I remember reading in 2015 about Bernie’s checkered past: kicked out of a commune for being too lazy (How is that even possible?!), no consistent job until he got elected at age 39, composer of amateurish pornography.  But the most shocking story was that as a young adult, he stole electricity from a neighbor when his own utilities were cut off due to lack of payment.

I wasn’t shocked that a leftist was stealing what belongs to others. Because, duh!

I was shocked that electricity had been invented when Bernie Sanders was a young adult.

It should be fun to watch Bernie wheeze his way around the track one more time, forcing the other candidates to move even farther left to counter him.  Assuming that they won’t already be so far left that they are barely visible, far out on the horizon.

 

But all of the fun this week has not come from the presidential candidates – it has also come from unstable types like Jussie Smollett and AOC.

I knew that the Smollett story was fishy, for several reasons.

First, Simpson’s Law of Ridiculous Names obviously applies in the case of “Jussie.”  Oddly spelled names have been scientifically proven to be associated with shaky character — you need look no farther than Obama flunky Jeh Johnston for evidence.  We can accept a “Justin,” and we can accept a “Jessie,” but “Jussie” is a no-go.

Also, he wanted us to believe that Trump supporters do the following: live in Chicago, recognize an obscure actor from an obscure tv show, hang out at 2 a.m. in a polar vortex with a bottle of bleach in one gloved hand, and a noose in the other.  (Someone has to say it: it was a FAKE NOOSE!  HA!)

Smollett’s tired, hackneyed leftist talking points in interviews were so boring that I started to believe that the only reason the cops didn’t point the finger at him earlier was that he wasn’t interesting enough to be a “person of interest.”

Finally, for a leftist, anti-white/anti-conservative/anti-common sense media, the story was too good to check, which always means that it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Cochise Frigidaire (the dentally-challenged Native American Vietnam-era refrigerator repairman who fantasized about conservative white kids screaming “build the wall” at him) was lying, but the MSM fell for it.  As was frequent-flyer but terrified-of-flying baby-talker Christine Blasey-Ford.  As were a variety of other atrocity-committing MAGA-hat-wearers who turned out to be imaginary.

If you are wondering if the MSM will ever learn, don’t hold your breath. Especially in a polar vortex.

 

But the award for most entertaining lefty of February has to go to AOC (Annoying Oblivious-Cortez).

Her roll out of the Green New Deal was a thing of beauty, combining all of the standard elements that we’ve come to expect from her party: utopian assumptions, laughable misunderstandings of the way the world actually works, and breathtaking incompetence.

Let’s lead with the incompetence.  (She certainly did!)

Remember when FDR pushed ambitious legislation that turned a temporary economic downturn into the Great Depression, or when LBJ started a War on Poverty that poverty won by a TKO in the 10^th round, or when Obama promised shovel-ready jobs that turned out to not be so shovel-ready?

Or when Obama promised that you could keep your doctor and your plan, and that you’d save $2500 on your health care costs, but it turned out that you could keep neither your doctor nor your plan, and you had to sleep with creepy old Willie Brown to get an appointment with your GP?

Wait, maybe that last part was just Kamala “bury me in a Y-shaped coffin” Harris.  (Hat tip to Black Adder.)

Well, AOC’s GND was just that kind of FUBAR CF, served with a side of WTF and another of STFU. (Acronyms are fun!)

First, she released a FAQ (and yes, the “F” stands for the same thing it did in the previous acronyms) describing the plan.   But the plan was so breathtakingly stupid – let’s confiscate the earnings of hardworking people to pay people who are unwilling to work, and then ram corks into the ends of cows that do not moo, and then replace air travel with trains! – that she immediately had to start backtracking.

She tweeted – and I quote – “There are multiple doctored GNC resolutions and FAQs floating around.  There was also a draft version that got uploaded + taken down.  There’s also draft versions floating out there.”

So the documents are “doctored,” but also draft versions, which were presumably not doctored, but were only preliminary and thus invalid, even though they don’t contradict the essence of later versions, which are no less dumb than the earlier versions.

Also, the dog ate my homework, eyewitness testimony is unreliable, my email was hacked, and table 3 clearly ordered the pitcher of kerosene served in breadbowls that I brought them.

In a 2/7 morning interview with NPR, AOC was asked, “Are you prepared to put on the table that yes, [conservatives] are actually right, what this requires is massive government intervention?” Her answer, which I am not making up: “It does.  It does.  Yeah, I have no problem saying that.”

Until that same evening, when she had a big problem saying that.  This time the interview was on MSNBC, and her response was subtly different:  “One way that the Right does try to mischaracterize what we’re doing as though it’s, like, some kind of massive government takeover.”

Anyway, after a few days of walking around in circles and stepping on rakes, AOC was finally knocked unconscious.  Her staff then leapt into action, telling reporters from the Hill that, “…while doctored FAQ documents are circulating on the internet, the one [we] released was an unfinished draft that [we] had not intended to publish.”

In related news, Carlos Danger (and why isn’t THAT guy a declared presidential candidate, by the way?) released a statement of his own:  “You know all of those pics of my genitalia that I sent to all of those underage girls?  I did not intend to publish them.  Sooooooo… can I be in Congress again?”

But the hijinks didn’t stop there.   Chinless cartoon turtle “Cocaine Mitch” McConnell plodded into action, proposing a vote on the GND in the Senate.  And leftists politicians cheered, eagerly climbing over each other to get in front of cameras and take credit for this visionary legislation.

Ha!  I kid.  They actually ran for cover, because even they know ridiculous it is.

But AOC was not deterred.   She touted the amazing benefits of the GND, saying that it can be a new “moon shot.”

When I first heard that, I thought that she might be planning to drop her pants and expose her rear end in the next House debate.  Which might be her best chance to distract the electorate from what is in the GND.

On the other hand, if it works, it might encourage DMH (“Dessicated Mummy Hands” Pelosi) or Hillary to try the same tactic.

So, please God, NOOO!!!

The encore to the GND launch was the Amazon kerfuffle.

True to her socialist hatred of all things prosperous or successful, AOC led the charge to prevent Amazon from bringing high paying jobs and a gusher of tax dollars to her constituents.  When Amazon agreed not to inflict these benefits on her district, AOC exulted, “Anything is possible!” and celebrated the victory over “corporate greed” and “worker exploitation.”

That’s the kind of “can’t do” spirit that made the left great.

Some of her supporters – who were all standing around with nothing to do in the middle of a work day – said, “Yay?”

Also, “I was told there would be a free lunch.  And afterwards a moon shot.”

From her interviews, it became clear that AOC thinks that a “tax break” means that New Yorkers would have to GIVE Amazon $3B, rather than agreeing to take $3B LESS up front (and then many billions more later ) than they would have otherwise received, if any hypothetical company was masochistic enough to invest in a hostile blue state.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as a political thinker, she makes a hell of a bartender.

Thus spake Martacus!

So I was traveling for a big chunk of the last week, and now that the news cycle moves at the speed of light, I feel like I’m a month behind on mocking every public figure in the news.  So this is going to be a “lightning round” kind of a column.

First, I think we need a new word to describe the current crop of Democrat presidential candidates.

I’ve always enjoyed the way that English has a bunch of idiosyncratic collective nouns for groups of various animals.  In addition to the plain vanilla “flock of birds” or “herd of former first ladies,” there are cool oddities such as a pride of lions, or a murder of crows.  (By the way, if we were to apply those kinds of terms to specific parts of the Democrat base, I’d be hard pressed to come up with better options than “a pride of transgenders” and “a murder of abortionists.”) (Not to mention a “warren of Northeastern WASPS.”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’ve been turning this idea over in my mind, and so far I’m thinking of the following options:

A confusion of Democratic candidates

A scourge of Democratic candidates

An embarrassment of Democrats

What do you think, CO nation?  Will one of those work, or do you have any better alternatives?

 

Let’s take a quick run through the Murderers’ Row of Stupid™ that is the current Dem lineup of declared candidates:

1.Spartacus.  Ugh.  He announced with a slickly banal video comprised of 73 cliches strung together – children are our future, gluten-free apple pie is great, I like Main Street not Wall Street – whose emptiness is only exceeded by that of the vast vacuum of deep space, and the tumble-weed-occupied hollowness of his own cranium.

I still can’t get over the fact that he called himself – un-ironically, and with a straight face – “Spartacus.”

Not since a young Gordon Sumner announced that he was henceforth to be known as “Sting” has someone so narcissistically renamed himself.  It’s a tribute to Sting’s musical talent that he was able to pull that off.

But kooky Cory is no Sting.  And he’s certainly no Spartacus.

Look, Cassie the Wonder Dog Simpson did not call HERSELF “the Wonder Dog.”  That’s an honorific bestowed by her many admirers and her owner.

And I could not get away with bombastically calling myself Martacus.

Though now that I’ve typed that, I like the way it looks.  Maybe when I’m ready to announce my exploratory committee, I run that one up the flag pole and see who salutes…

 

2. Elizabeth Warren. The gift that keeps on Indian-giving, and she who must eternally be mocked, manages to step in it again. After denying for months that she ever claimed Indian ancestry on official documents, a mid-80’s application to the Texas bar surfaced with her signature on it affirming her Native American ancestry.

To make matters worse, she met with the head of some Indian organization and gave a classic misdirection apology, saying that she regrets clouding the issue of tribal affiliation or membership.  As if the problem were that she didn’t properly document the genealogical minutiae that would establish her 1/1024th bona fides, rather than that she’s less Indian than Bjorn Borg!

By the way, if no one has gotten to this yet, can someone please check her high school yearbooks?  I’m sure that most of what we’d find is about what we’d expect.   Her favorite album was the Beatles’ White Album, her favorite song was Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” etc.  (And yes, that’s the deep pull of the day: a Procol Harum reference.) (#neverstopmocking)

But maybe we’d find out the sweetest possible irony: that once, for a Halloween party, she wore redface.

3. Amy “Who?” Klobuchar. This Minnesota Senator made her announcement outdoors, which meant that she warned about how global warming is going to roast us all, while a benevolent and hilarious God sent a snowstorm that threatened to bury her in a neck-deep drift as she read.

Also, within 24 hours of her announcement, reports surfaced that she is one of the worst bosses in DC, with a very high staff turnover rate, due in large part to her tendency to scream, belittle and throw binders at her subordinates.  According to reports, she has consulted Hillary Clinton, who advised her that lamps are easier to throw than binders, and that accuracy depends mostly on snapping the wrist on the release.

4. South Bend, IN mayor Pete Buttigieg. Never heard of this guy.  But he’s got “butt” right there in his name, so he should fit right in with this crowd.  And the bumper stickers will be funny.

5. Former HUD secretary Julian Castro has two things going for him. He can bask in the warm glow of success that we all associate with our nation’s well-run and desirable public housing projects, with their picket fences and spotless elevators and charming small-arms fire. And he’s named “Castro,” which subliminally endears him to leftists who cannot get enough of murderous socialist dictators.  As long as the competing ticket of Carl Hitler and Freddy Stalin continue to have fundraising trouble in the Midwest, Castro has the inside track to the mass murderer aficionado slice of the moderate left.

6. Kamala Harris. This gem is seen by many as the front runner, and I can see why.

She doesn’t have “butt” or “Castro” in her name, she’s never called herself Spartacus, she’s never pelted subordinates with office supplies, and she doesn’t have to pretend that she’s not white, because she’s not.  She’s also not Hillary Clinton, which is a huge advantage, in life and in politics.

On the other hand, she was a prosecutor, which for a distressingly large slice of the leftist electorate makes her one of those little Eichmanns who crush the noble victim classes under the heel of the patriarchy, or something.

But on the third hand, she was apparently a mediocre prosecutor at best, so she might be able to argue that she was secretly undermining the system from within by being terrible at her job.

On the fourth hand, she slept with creepy old San Francisco mayor Willie Brown to get two of her first jobs in politics.  She was 29 at the time, and he was 60.  And married.  And not exactly Idris Alba.  (Who you may remember as the guy who narrowly edged me out for People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year in what many have called “a very suspicious result.”) (And by “many” I mean “me.”)

So you know it was true love.  Because the heart wants what it wants.

And apparently what the heart sometimes wants is a $72K per year no-show job on the California Medical Assistance Commission.

There’s a name for someone who does what Kamala Harris did with Willie Brown to launch her political career.

And it rhymes with the last name of Cory Booker.

But as hilarious as the announced candidates are, other Democrats have been even funnier this month.  I want to talk about AOC (Annoying Oblivious & Callow) in my next column, but I cannot ignore the amazing shenanigans in the top echelon of the Virginia Democratic party.

Apparently the equivalent of “business casual” for Democrats in the 1980s was walking around in black face.  Two of the top three state officeholders turned out to have blackface pictures in circulation, and the third leftist stooge only managed to avoid that fate by being African-American, which seems to be what it takes for a Virginia Dem to resist the inexplicable draw to go full Jolson.

Unfortunately for him, he is also something of a Bill Clinton/Ted Kennedy old school Democrat (genus: “grope-a-saurus rex”), and has thus been credibly accused by two different women of rape.

And these weren’t Blasey-Ford-esque – “I only know that it happened sometime in the 1980s and somewhere in the Western hemisphere, and there were no witnesses and no corroborating evidence of any kind” – type of accusations.  These were made by credible women, who had dates and details and supporting contemporary accounts, and with whom the creepy pol admitted having sex.

And so naturally, the MSM and Democrats (but I repeat myself) have not said a word about this guy.  Thus launching the “Who? Me too?” movement, when the accused perv in question is a leftist.

Ironically, none of the above details about the Governor Blackface scandal are the worst part.

Even the picture of Gov. Northam was not the worst part.

(And you’d think that it would be hard to get worse than having your staff fidgeting in a meeting, until one of them clears her throat and say, “So… boss…  Were you the one in blackface, or the one in the klan hood?”  And then you notice that your p.r. person has her fingers crossed as she whispers, “klan hood, klan hood, klan hood.”)

The worst part was that just before the blackface scandal broke, the Governor revealed the leftist nonchalance about abortions up until the moment of birth, and – in his case, apparently – afterwards, too.

If I were hired to advise Democrat candidates (HA!), I would advise my clients to keep some old pics of themselves in blackface from their high school production of Porgy and Bess.  That way, when they get caught taking a bold pro-infanticide stance in an interview, they could leak those pics to the press, and hastily call a press conference to explain that they’ve always been admirers of George Gershwin’s work, and those were different times.

It’s a damage-control cliché for a reason: When the talk turns to baby killing, roll out the shoe polish.

 

Which brings me to my defense of dressing up as a member of another race.

I know.  But hear me out.

Of course I would never defend actual, old-style, racist minstrel show blackface.  That’s the perfect example of the kind of issue I used as teachable moments as I raised my children: if I saw a report on a blackface story as my then-2-year-old daughter was toddling by, I’d ask her, “Who do we blame that on?”

And she’d look at me angelically and say, “The Democrats!”

And I’d give her a hug and a cookie.

But enough about my fantastic parenting skills, and my thriving young adult daughter.

Blackface is obviously offensive and wrong.  But going to a costume party dressed as a favorite character of another race is the opposite, if it is meant to emulate and compliment, not denigrate.  White kids who look up to black celebrities might go to a party dressed as Michael Jordan or Bruno Mars, or – if they have not been raised properly – as Barack Obama, with makeup to match.

Even leftist hypocrites have been forced to implicitly admit that that is not offensive.  They’ve given passes to people like unpleasant professional shrieker Joy Behar (who once dressed up as a “beautiful African woman”), and Jimmy “Waaaah” Kimmel (who dressed up like Karl Malone and spoke in a parody of Ebonics).

Obviously, the purpose of a costume party – at Halloween or any other time – is to wear a costume.  If you’re dressing as someone, you want to try to look like that person.  If that person has different hair, you wear a wig.  If that person has a beard, you get a fake beard.  If that person dresses distinctively, you try to find similar clothes.

And if that person has a different skin color than yours, you try to match that.  Otherwise, no one at the party is ever going to guess that the white girl in the dress is supposed to be Beyonce, or the white kid in the suit is supposed to be Obama, or the black girl in the hideous pantsuit and the prosthetic Clydesdale ankles is supposed to be Hillary.  (By the way, if you are thinking that “Prosthetic Clydesdale Ankles” would be a good name for a punk band, you are not wrong.)

Which would lead us to the perfect world designed by humorless leftist poke-noses: a world in which everybody would go to costume parties dressed exactly like themselves.   Hooray!

I am Martacus, and I approve this message.

So we’ve all survived the January during which the Dems took over the House.  I’d like to look back and mock some people, but there is one truly sad thing to discuss first: the Democrats’ shocking move toward the extreme left on abortion.

Only a decade or so ago, the mainstream Left mantra on abortion was that it should be “safe, legal and rare.”  That was always a self-contradictory idea – what other medical procedure would you apply that to?  Tattooing?  Cosmetic surgery?  Kidney donation?

Yes, all of those should be safe and legal.  But then, why “rare?”

“Rare” was at least a nod toward the morally problematic nature of abortion, even if only in the most tangential, watered-down way.

Mainstream Dems also talked about abortion in qualified, carefully calibrated terms, focusing on extremely unusual situations: cases of rape, incest, or when delivery would endanger the life of the mother.

Sure, that talking point was hypocritical.   Rape and incest account for a vanishingly small number of abortions, and the “mother’s health” label was meant to suggest one thing – the very rare cases in which delivery truly threatened health – but in effect expanded to include “mental health,” which was then stretched to apply to any mother who suggested that having a child would be  at least slightly stressful for her.

Spoiler alert: having kids is stressful.  I’ve got two wonderful daughters, and along with love and pride and joy, they’ve caused my wife and I some stress.  (But the oldest is in her 87^th trimester, and the youngest is in her 68^th, so it’s probably too late to change our minds now, even for the Dems I’m about to write about.)

But as the old saying goes, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.”

Unfortunately, the elite Left can no longer be bothered to feign even a passing acquaintance to virtue when it comes to abortion.

Consider 3 examples:

1.Andrew Cuomo (of the abortion-enthusiast “Catholic” Cuomos) recently signed a far-left bill guaranteeing that women can get third-term abortions.  Added bonuses: you no longer have to be a doctor to perform abortions in New York state, and if you decide to beat a pregnant woman badly enough that she loses her baby, you can’t be charged with a crime against that baby.

Because the baby was not a baby, understand?  Thank you, Party of Science™!

To add to the tragic idiocy, Cuomo had the World Trade Center illuminated with pink lights to celebrate the passage of this ghoulish bill, and a bunch of leftist creeps gave the announcement a standing ovation.

2. Virginia Democrat Kathy Tran was caught in a high profile gaffe. I am using the political definition of “gaffe:” when someone is caught accidentally telling the truth.

Tran was supporting a bill that would allow abortions up to the moment before birth.  When the GOP majority leader asked her if her bill would allow such an abortion, if a mother and her doctor agreed on mental health reasons, she hesitated.  He clarified, by asking what if the mother was in labor.

And Tran said that yes, the bill would allow that.

As you would imagine, narrow-minded Americans who are against infanticide – call them crazy deplorables if you must – expressed what some might call “horror,” and Tran was caught up in a firestorm.

Within a few days, she tried a classic political correction.  When someone pointed out that she had answered the hypothetical question with a “yes,” Tran got a chance to correct the record: “I should have said: ‘Clearly, no, because infanticide is not allowed in Virginia, and what would have happened in that moment would be a live birth.’”

First, you’ve got to love that: “What I meant by ‘yes,’ was actually ‘no.’”  Got it?

Second, anyone willing to risk being called either a traitor to her gender or a mansplainer might respond:  A. If this bill passed, infanticide WOULD be allowed in Virginia, and B. That hypothetical would not involve a “live birth,” since the baby would not have made it outside yet.

Because the extreme left argument seems to be that the birth canal is a magic tube, and passing through it (preferably while a person in the room chants an ancient Druidian incantation) mystically confers personhood.  And since Tran’s hypothetical involved a baby who hadn’t yet made it through the magic tube, there is no infanticide.

Again, thank you, Party of Science™!!

3. Fortunately for K-Tran, leftist mansplaining Democrat Governor Ralph Northam rode to the rescue.

Unfortunately for her, he was no more able than she was to square the moral circle.  In fact, he made things even worse – something I wouldn’t have thought possible, after Little Miss “Yes-means-No” had shared her wisdom.

When asked about Tran’s now-infamous answer, he hemmed.  Then he hawed.  Then he harrumphed, and cleared his throat, and babbled for a bit.

Then, because he is a pediatric neurologist who must have thought that “pediatric” meant “foot doctor,”  (So close!), he stuck his foot deeply in his mouth:“[Third trimester abortions are] done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable.”

Yes and no.  I would guess that many late term abortions MIGHT result (note Northam’s repetition of “may” rather than “must”) from discovering that a fetus had severe problems that would make him or her non-violable.  But there’s nothing in this law – or in laws as proposed and executed (so to speak) by the far left in other states – that requires such a cause.

Northam continues, “So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Yikes!  Read that again.  The infant would be delivered.  The infant would be kept comfortable.  THEN a discussion would ensue?!

What would the discussion be about, Dr. Mengele?  The weather?  What kind of bullpen the Yankees have this year?  Whether the infant is likely to identify with the gender that corresponds to its genitalia?

Tragically, from the elite Left’s perspective, Dr. Northam’s mistake wasn’t the obvious moral one of considering whether we ought to hold a pillow over the infant’s face until it stops that annoying crying.

It was the political mistake of calling the “tissue mass” an “infant.”  Three times!

(And maybe the scientific mistake of not acknowledging the mystical work performed by the infant’s passing through the magic tube.  Hooray for Science!™)

This is so depressing that if I didn’t laugh at these people, I’d have to cry.

But to all of my friends who usually vote Democrat, please consider whether your party has left you on this issue.  Because if you find yourself giving a standing ovation to late-term abortions, or lighting up public buildings to celebrate them, it might be gut-check time.

 

Ugh.  How about a change of topic to something more cheerful, like an incompetent sex offender story?  (He said, in a deftly skillful transition.)

Meet Arturo Martinez, a sex offender with horns in his head who was trying to lure an under-aged female into his house so that he could allegedly assault her.   I don’t want to provide a link — in case you are enjoying a meal while you are reading this column – but you can Google it pretty easily.  I mean, how many sex offender freakazoids with surgically implanted horns in their heads can be running around out there?

Wait – don’t answer that.  Let’s just assume that if you come across one story like this, that’s the guy I’m talking about.

There’s a nice mugshot of him in the story, and he’s exactly what you would expect: well-groomed, leading man good looks, appears to be someone who may have given Idris Elba and me a run for our money in our hotly contested campaign for People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2018 award.  (Don’t bother looking through the back issues: I narrowly lost, and I’m as shocked about it as you are.)

HA!  I kid.

He actually looks like the kind of guy whom you can picture saying, “You know what will improve my chances with the gals?  Intentional facial disfiguration and surgically implanted skull horns!”  (By the way, last year at Coachella I saw Intentional Facial Disfiguration open for Surgically Implanted Skull Horns.  Killer show!)

Anyway, this guy’s look:  grotesquely elongated earlobes from wearing those mini-ear-frisbees in them, unnatural holes in his upper ears, and in his cheeks.  And oh, yeah… he’s also got horn-like protrusions in his mid-forehead, and four or more short metal rods sticking out of his head above those.

So, yeah, I’m not going to be giving him my blessing if he decides to propose to one of my daughters.

The story is grim, but I’m not going to dwell on the details.  Instead, as part of my Mr. Bright Side campaign, I’m going to find the silver lining on this particular human dark cloud.

And that is: thank God that most criminals are so incredibly stupid.

If you were a results-oriented criminal-American go-getter whose primary goal was to lure females into your house, wouldn’t you want to make yourself look as non-threatening and benign as possible?  I think of a Ted Bundy, who kept himself well-groomed, and got a fake cast to play on the nurturing/helping instincts of potential female victims.  Or a Bill Clinton, who posed as a US president to lure women into his big, white house.

But this guy is no Ted Bundy.  He’s not even (to drop a few standard deviations further down the IQ scale), a Ted Danson.

This Dating Game winner had a bunch of repulsive holes punched into his vaguely porcine face, then had some metal rods and subcutaneous horns implanted in his big, evil head.

Because nothing gets the ladies to drop their defenses like a guy who looks like he just stepped out of a Grimm’s fairy tale.

Also, assuming that he somehow did successfully assault someone, do you think he’s going to be able to lay low afterwards?  I picture the police having a news conference, “We’re asking the public to help us find the suspect, who is described as being white, bald and ugly, with horns and little metal spikes sticking out of—“

Annnnnddd the officer’s voice is drowned out by the instant ringing of every phone in the building.

I always think the same thing when I see some gangbangers being perp-walked into an arraignment.   I wish I could be in the crowd of bystanders and heckle those idiots, “Hey Luis, way to keep a low profile!”

Then the Democrat-voting (I’m guessing) offender would glare at me and snarl, “How did you know my name, homes?” (Which is what I assume he’d say, because I get all my information about the Hispanic underworld from watching crime shows on network tv.)

And I’d say, “Because it’s tattooed across your forehead, you dope, along with your gang affiliations, one tear drop under your eye for each murder you are thus confessing, and that super cool tribute to your mom, whom I’m sure is really proud!”

Anyway, let’s not all judge Arturo.  Maybe he just had those horns implanted into his head because he identifies as a dragon. Or a goat.  Or a moose.  And don’t you dare go and mis-species him, you cis-species bigot.

Also, he can use whatever bathroom – or watering hole, or trough – he wants.

File this story under “coincidences in the news:”

Earlier in January, far-left hack-haven website Buzzfeed was proven laughably wrong on yet another anti-Trump story, so much so that even Bob Mueller felt compelled to issue a statement saying that their latest story was full of Schumer.  This is not at all unusual for Buzzfeed, as you could guess if you went to their headquarters, and noticed that the big sign in their lobby that says, “Consecutive Days Without Getting a Story Wrong” has been stuck at “0” since 2012.

Anyway, on Friday, January 25^th they announced massive layoffs.

I know what you’re thinking:  HA HA HA HA HA!

Also: WHOO! Stop!  My ribs are killing me!  Let me catch my breath!

And finally: HA HA HA HA HA!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s dive deeper into the details of the story and tease out some nuance:

Far left website full of hateful “journalists” blows story after story, spends like drunken congressmen but can’t make a dime of profit, and is now careening toward insolvency like Hillary tumbling down some temple stairs after throwing a horseshoe.  The end.

That’s called “brevity,” people.  And it’s the soul of wit.

Actually, there are a few details worth savoring.  For example, the layoffs hit 43 of the 250 “journalists” working there.  Yet oddly, none of the zero conservative journalists who have ever worked there were affected.

Also, the hardest hit groups were the national desk, the entertainment team, and – I quote – “the LBGT desk.”

I know that I’m old and out of it, but what exactly is a “LBGT desk?”  A desk that thinks it’s an ottoman?  One that identifies as an armoire?  One that has some drawers that you pull out in the regular way, but others that must be pushed in?

And if you push in the pull drawers or pull out the push ones, it screams at you for being a cis-gendered bigot?

I’m so confused.

 

In other news, you might think that after the MSM humiliated themselves by jumping on the Buzzfeed story bandwagon and then having to retreat when it proved to be as phony as Lizzie Warren’s Cherokee birth certificate (#wemustneverstopmockingher), they might be a little gun shy about chasing the next “too good to be checked” political fairy tale.

But you’d be wrong.  Because at the first whisper of, “What’s that old Indian dude doing over there with those white kids in the red hats?” they stampeded across the national mall like Michael Moore when he hears someone drop a glazed donut a block away.

And within minutes, they were hand-fed a heavily-edited, minute-long video depicting a leathery-skinned old guy standing next to a young white kid in a MAGA hat.  So they raced off to immediately post their first, restrained accounts, with subtle titles like, “Sacred Native Elder nearly lynched by racist mob of Trump-supporting Stepford Children,” and “Bad Orange Man blows dog whistle, Sends bloodthirsty white-privilege junkies to dismember and consume saintly Minority Speaker of Truth to Power.”

Ten minutes later, when our leading leftist journalists had entered what is technically known as their “refractory period,” some sane citizens watched the entire video of the encounter, and Googled Nathan Phillips, and the MSM accounts turned out to be what AOC would call “morally right.”  (Which is to say, not even factually close to the truth.)

Read these accounts, and see if you can spot the subtle differences:

MSM version:  Nathan Phillips is a super-respected Native-American elder and Medal of Honor Winner who served many years in Vietnam. He was surrounded and threatened by obnoxious, age-ist and racist white kids who chanted, “Build the Wall,” and who blocked his attempts to get away from them.

Factual version: As a young man, Mr. Phillips had a history of assault and alcohol-related crimes.  He did spend two years in the Marines – and God bless him for that – but he spent his service time in El Toro.  (For those of you who didn’t get your Master’s in Vietnamese Geography, “El Toro” is not just outside of Da Nang.  It is, in fact, in “California.”) (Which, if I’m not mistaken, is a Spanish word which means “very, very far from Vietnam.”)

Although he didn’t win a Medal of Honor or a Purple Heart, he was a three-time winner of the prestigious “AWOL” award.   His service designation was not “mortar-man” or “tank commander” or “specialist-in-swimming-with-a-serrated-knife-clenched-in-his teeth.”

His job was actually listed as “util RefrigMan,” which my crack research team tells me is a refrigeration mechanic.

I’m not making that up.  He basically spent the war years as a Maytag repairman in California.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not one to talk.  I’ve never served, and I couldn’t repair a fridge to save my life.  On the other hand, I’ve never claimed to be an amalgam of Crazy Horse, Rambo and Gandhi, either.

But boy, did Phillips get a lot of support from empty-headed celebrities. Fright-wigged decapitation-fantasizer Kathy Griffin called for the innocent high school kids to be harassed and publicly shamed.  Several dozen talking heads on the various CNN and CNN-adjacent networks aroused themselves with fantasies of what punishments should be inflicted on these evil white kids.

Leftist pols got in on the act, too.  A typical tweet came from Rep. Deb Haaland, New Mexico Democrat and a Native American, who accused the students of “blatant hate,” and praised the way Phillips “put his life on the line for our country.”

Yes.  Because those fridges are very heavy, and if you are super-drunk when you work on one, it can fall and squish you.  That’s probably why he kept going AWOL, because he was tormented by ice-maker-related flashbacks.

Back to our story: the full video shows that Phillips was the aggressor, walking into the middle of the Catholic kids, banging his drum in their faces and trying to provoke them into a response.  In an act of restraint that’s hard for me to imagine young males are capable of, they did not smash his drum over his head, or respond in any way.  They did not chant, “Build the Wall,” as Cochise Frigidaire claimed, but sang their school song.

Other than that, the MSM got the story absolutely right.

The low point in this story for me was when I heard that Reza Aslan posted a pic of one of the Catholic kids, asking, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”

First, I was heartbroken to hear that a magnificent Christ-figure lion was dissing the kids.  But then I realized that the “Aslan” here was the tiny-brained leftist who was fired by CNN two years ago for some anti-Trump tweets that were too obscene and vile even for CNN.

And if that description – too malicious to be a CNN host – seems like it’s almost metaphysically impossible, I agree.  It’s like the other members of the Grateful Dead staging an intervention, in which they tell you that they are worried about your drug use.

But more importantly, I don’t like that TB (tiny-brain) Aslan may have violated my trademark by pointing out the innocent kid’s face-punchability rating.

Those of you who have followed my work for CO over the last several years probably remember all the R&D money that I put into developing the Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI)™ in 2017.

If so, you’ll also remember that Harry Reid has been designated the proud holder of the highest SFPI of all time.  But there are tons of people with higher SFPI ratings than the innocent Catholic kid, including Hillary, Barack, Trump, Lizzie Warren, Jim Acosta, Scowling Wookie, Spartacus, Ted Cruz (sadly), and a cast of thousands more.

In fact, the Catholic kid couldn’t even compete in the Minors Division of the SFPI™ tournament, because the undisputed champion there is David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg, of potty-mouth Parkland gun-grabbing fame.

Anyway, nice job, MSM.  Once again you’ve proven that no one should ever trust you about anything, ever again.

 

Finally, I thought I’d let everyone in on yet another New Year’s Resolution that I’ve made.  (At this pace, I should be making my last New Year’s resolution of 2019 right around the beginning of July.  Spoiler alert: I resolve to put on my biggest fireworks show yet!)

As a mature male with the ability to grow the 5 o’clock shadow/beard of a mature male who identifies as a male, I’ve been a user of shaving equipment since I turned 13.  (Did I skip right past the sad, weak little mustache stage of many adolescent males, and go straight to an impressive full beard that allowed me to begin dating college girls before I could legally drive, you ask?  Yes, thanks for asking.) (Also, how did you get access to my 9^th grade yearbook photo?)

When I saw the Gillette ad lecturing me about the dangers of toxic masculinity, I immediately had two thoughts:

1.Would any women’s fashion or haircare or makeup company EVER dare to insult their core audience this way?  “Hey ladies, you know how you are always making the men around you utterly miserable, with your constant nagging and terrible taste in movies and ridiculous voting choices and lack of driving ability and incomprehensible lack of appreciation for football and carpentry and logical argument and the music of Johnny Cash?   And the way that men die earlier, largely because your soul-sucking complaints eventually rob us of the will to live?   And don’t get us started on your unconscionable use of sex as a weapon.  Anyway, please buy all of our products, you awful, awful harpies.”

No.  You will never see that ad.

(*Also, please note that the preceding paragraph was written for humorous purposes only, and obviously has no relation to any female, living or dead, and especially not to anyone to whom I might be married, for example.)

2.Where is my Gillette razor, so that I can put it in the vice and then smash it with a framing hammer in “The Testosterone Zone” (which is what I have just now decided to call my workshop, where I keep a variety of power- and hand-tools which I use to build and maintain what we amateur anthropologists call “civilization”)?

Ugh.  Hey Gillette, thanks for the timely warning about the terrible dangers of “toxic masculinity.”

Here’s hoping that the men of America will soon teach you a little lesson about the horrors of “toxic profitability.”

Also, just in case you were hoping that whatever you lost by insulting your male customers might be made up for by increased sales to female customers – who, after all, need razors to use on their legs and underarms?  Well, think again.

Because the kind of women who get their gender-non-binary underwear in a bunch because of their outrage about toxic masculinity also happen to be the kind of women who do NOT shave either their legs or their armpits.

Enjoy bankruptcy, you condescending jerks!

On a related note, if any of the good people at the Schick razor company are looking for a sarcastic blogger with a firm jawline and no aversion to lucrative sponsorships – coincidentally, someone who was also a finalist for People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, as far as I know — please contact me through CO at the Cautious Optimism page.

 

This new year is not even a month old, and already I feel like I’m six months behind on mocking the boatload of ridiculous goofballs who are so far infesting 2019.

To start with, I have four thoughts about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  And I know what you’re thinking: that may be a half dozen more thoughts than she has, about anything at all.

First, I understand the impulse behind the “AOC” moniker.  Because I totally agree – with all right-thinking Americans – that saying “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” is a colossal waste of syllables.  I get it — “LBJ” and “JFK” were acceptable shortcuts – but I don’t like it.

It’s one thing for an ambitious and bombastic rapper to call himself the Notorious BIG.  It’s another thing for sad, leftist fan-boys and fan-girls to call ancient far-left justice Ginsburg “RBG.”  And even a third, more ridiculous thing to call the ex-bartender AOC.

In fact — if you’ll allow me the first rambling diversion of 2019 — I’m not thrilled with extra names, either.  John Wayne… that’s a fine cowboy actor.  But John Wayne Gacy was terrible.  As was Lee Harvey Oswald, and Henry Lee Lucas.  Jerry Lewis did some decent work with Dino, but Jerry Lee Lewis is the kind of guy who’ll elope with his 13-year old cousin.

John Booth, he’s a guy you can play poker or golf with.  But John Wilkes Booth?  That’s a homicidal Democrat who’ll kill a Republican president who just freed the slaves.

Come to think of it, one-namers are usually pretty unstable, too: Cher, Madonna, Prince.   And don’t get me started on name-repeaters like Sirhan Sirhan, or Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  She-Guevara and her cutesy initials nickname.

Ugh.  I guess I’ll end up referring to her as AOC.  But I’d like CO nation to know that when I use those letters, I’ll be thinking, “Annoying, Obtuse & Callow.”

Second, I initially agreed with whoever it was who said that AOC was the left’s Sarah Palin.  That comparison had a ring of truth, as both are attractive, female pols who burst on the national scene suddenly, and who soon proved themselves to be gaffe prone, and less than the deepest of thinkers.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that that comparison gives AOC too much credit, and Palin too little.  Whatever else you think of Palin, she paid some political dues before her national debut; she entered politics by getting elected to a city council, and then won a mayoral race, and then became a state Governor, before McCain picked her as his VP running mate.   Sure, she’s not exactly Disraeli when it comes to brilliant public speaking, but some of her most famous gaffes were actually invented by Tina Fey, and the rest were picked up on and emphasized by a relentlessly hostile media.

Compare that to AOC, whose entire pre-election cv comprised a brief role as “hot dancer #4” in a rooftop video shot during college, and a stint as a bartender.  Reports that she was less than a world-class mixologist cannot be confirmed, though anecdotally, if you ordered a rum and coke from her you were equally likely to get a tequila and hydrogen peroxide, or a gin and rubbing alcohol.

On the other hand, as a political thinker, she makes a hell of a bartender.

Third, it’s ironic to me that leftists have flocked to her at least in large part for the most anti-feminist of reasons: because she is young and attractive.  After all, is she saying anything that Bernie Sanders isn’t?  Or that Hugo Chavez didn’t?  Or that the grizzled guy with the hygiene issue and the methadone habit at your local library who talks to himself isn’t?

No.  But those cheekbones, and that red lipstick!  I see her dancing in that rooftop video, and I find myself thinking, “Maybe a 70% top tax rate isn’t so bad.  I mean, look at her little black skirt…”  Then my wife clouts me across the back of my head, and I come back to my senses.

I think Ogden Nash said it best:  “It’s always tempting to impute/Unlikely virtues to the cute.”

And here’s a sobering thought for those who are beguiled by her fresh face: Ashley Judd and Alyssa Milano were both pretty attractive not that long ago.  But their bilious thoughts seem to be seeping to the surface, and transforming them into haggard, aged-before-their-time harpies who are becoming as unpleasant on the outside as they are on the inside.

Fourth, Annoying-OC is a potent combination of someone who thinks stupid thoughts, and then says them stupidly.  In her case, she’s got a teenie/valley-girl delivery that the MSM has somehow managed not to notice.

In recent interviews, she made Ta-nehisi (gesundheit) Coates, a whitey-hating African-American pseudo-intellectual look like Immanuel Kant, and she made Anderson Cooper look reasonable.  She sprinkles “like” into her sentences, and she talks about people being at the “tippy top” of income earners.  She whined about how unfair it was to get too concerned with being “factually and precisely, semantically correct,” when we should be concerned with being “morally right.”

Because when I’m looking for moral instruction, I skip Aquinas and Augustine and Christ, and look for a youngster who can’t get a drink order straight.

Speaking of not being a slave to factual, precise correctness, in one recent tweet, she alluded to $22 trillion in military spending that “could not be traced, documented or explained.”  Some pedantic critic pointed out that that’s more money than the military has spent from the time of George Washington to George W.  But I guess he’s morally wrong.

There are so many things that she needs to – but cannot – explain.  Such as how we can possibly go to 100% non-polluting cars within 10 years.  And where she would get the $32 trillion required to pay for her Medicare-for-all proposal for only one decade.  And why table 2 ordered a pitcher of Bud Light, but she gave them a bottle of liquid soap and a Pez dispenser.

She complained about the way Trump “manufactures crises” — I give her a point for getting the plural of “crisis” right, but deduct a point for parroting a stale leftist talking point – but within two weeks made news by announcing that the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t stop climate manbearpig.  Also, people in Alabama have ringworm because the government hasn’t taken over healthcare.  Stupid Trump!

But AOC is not the only mockable lefty out there.  Not when Nancy Pelosi is doddering around the House.

My favorite moment so far this year was when Trump waited until the Dem leadership and their entourage were on buses heading for the airport for the greatest vacation getaway ever, and then he said that they couldn’t use the airplanes because of the government shutdown.

Ouch!  If Nancy’s withered head didn’t contain enough Botox to kill a former-first-lady-sized Clydesdale, I’m sure she would have had a very angry expression on her almost lifelike face.

As part of my “Look on the bright side for 2019” resolution, I feel compelled to point out that one stop on the Dems’ itinerary was to have been Egypt, and that could have been a disaster.  Because if Pelosi had visited the pyramids and some locals had seen her, there was a very real risk of a panicked stampede, among cries of, “The curse is alive! Flee! The mummy walks among us!”

My second-favorite moment of the year is a tie between Chuck-and-Nancy’s disastrous PR debacle/American Gothic recreation as they woodenly responded to Trump’s wall speech, and Lizzie Warren’s catastrophic home video (#wemustneverstopmockingher).

In a “what was she thinking?” moment, Warren followed in the footsteps of the hip kids these days by attempting a selfie video.  The whole thing was artificial and painful, but the best moment was when the highly educated Paleface Powhatan attempted a white working-class accent, saying, “I think I’m a gonna get me a beer.”

On the bright side, she did manage to open and drink from the bottle without breaking it and accidentally stabbing herself in the neck with the jagged edge and then covering the camera with arterial spray before bleeding out on the floor.

On the other hand, not since another phony old white lady  (CAW CAW) attempted a black accent (“Ah don’t feel no ways tah-rd, I come too fa-uhr…”) has an ethnic group been so defamed by an outsider.

I feel terrible for American Indians right now.  I don’t know which is worse: Liz Warren pretending to be one of them, or the fact that that creepy old non-Vietnam vet fraud who slandered the Kentucky high school kids at the March for Life IS one of them.

For me, the last third of 2018 was marked by three politically significant stories.  One was mostly bad, and the other two were very, very good.

The bad is obvious: the November election.  Sure, it wasn’t all bad.  Some egregious leftists narrowly lost (Beta in TX, whitey-hating racists for governor in GA and FL, quasi-animated wax figure Bill Nelson for Senate in FL).  The GOP picked up a few Senate seats.  Some entertainingly boneheaded Dems who are going to provide tons of future embarrassment for the left won (I’m looking at you, She-Guevara Googly Eyes).

But it was mostly bad, with Dems picking up over 40 house seats, and winning narrow Senate victories in red states that ought to be ashamed of themselves.  So enough about that.

Because my new’s years resolution is to be Mr. Sunny Side, I’m going to focus on two columns I wrote about the two best stories from late 2018: Lizzie Warren’s heap big DNA disaster, and Brett Kavanaugh’s triumph over the leftist orcs in DC and the media.

I wrote about Warren’s PR stunt/Hindenburg test-flight as the “act of unintentional self-immolation by the albino Apache herself.

Obviously, Trump was living in her empty, blonde head rent-free, or she never would have taken a DNA test in such a transparently desperate move to establish her Cherokee bona fides in the first place.  But once she took the test and found out that she is overwhelmingly white, the only rational path was obvious: swear the DNA tester to secrecy, destroy the results and start screaming about misogyny, or any other non-Indian-related bogus leftist talking point.

But no one has ever accused recent Democratic presidential contenders of being slaves to rationality.

So Warren compounded the problem.  She poured gasoline on the fire, steered into the skid, and made a terrible-PR mountain out of an embarrassing genetic molehill.

She produced a campaign-ad style video during which she talked to various members of the Warren family about how the old folks all used to wax poetic about their Indian ancestry.  If you’ve seen that video, you may have noticed something about the people in it: every last one of them is incredibly white.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I mean, unless you are a Democrat who wants to be president.

Anyway, she managed to act smug as the DNA tester confirmed that she does indeed have “some” Indian ancestry.  If by “some,” you mean “the same ratio as I have of stellar dust from ancient comet strikes in my backyard, as compared to regular old earth-dirt.”  And I’d expect all of my neighbors to mock me if I started calling my backyard “the Lawn of Tranquility.”

Of course the sweetest irony comes from knowing that Lizzie could only have thought that she’d get away with such a laughable claim if she knew that the dishonest MSM would cover for her.

 

And for about half a day, they tried, coming out with multiple variations of headlines touting “the strong proof” that her DNA test gave to her claims of uber-Cherokee-osity.

But within minutes, people who can do math started to point out that she is likely somewhere around 99.9% white, along with several other fun facts.  Such as that she likely has many more times as much DNA from at least one white male ancestor who helped round up the Cherokee for the Trail of Tears.  (Cue the sad trombone/peacepipe.)

And that the average white American has something like 8 times as much Indian DNA as Liz has.  Despite the fact that, according to extensive research that I just now completed, most of them have never contributed even ONE recipe to Pow Wow Chow!  You can look it up.

And that’s not all of the crab bisque that Lizzie now has on her face.  Because she hadn’t just been claiming that some distant ancestor 6 to 10 generations back was a Cherokee.  She was claiming that her own mother was so obviously Indian that her grandparents wouldn’t accept her into their family, so her parents had to elope.

During my afore-mentioned research, I covered the back of an envelope with my own mathematical calculations, and I’ve arrived at the following conclusion:  Liz’s mom was not 6 to 10 generations back.  She was roughly one generation back.

So at most, one of that woman’s grandparents’ grandparents’ parent MIGHT have been at least part Indian.  At worst, one of THAT person’s grandparents’ grandparent MIGHT have been an Indian.

But since the DNA test actually used DNA samples taken from central and south Americans, that magical Indian ancestor may have actually been a Brazilian snake-wrangler, or a syphilitic conquistador, or an alcoholic member of the lesser Spanish nobility who was forced to go to the New World to try to dry out, and also because his continually passing out in the soup bowl was proving embarrassing to King Ferdinand.

And yes, there is as much scientific evidence to support the syphilitic,snake-wrangling,hard-drinking dinner-disruptor theory as there is to support the “I’m-a-blue-eyed-Delaware-Cherokee” theory of Elizabeth Warren.

But the Mendacious Mohawk was not ready to give up yet.  In a post-disaster interview she said that she released the DNA results because, and I quote, “I am an open book.”

Yes.  And that book is called The White Pages.

She also fell back on the oldest of ploys used by people who have made some issue all about themselves.  She said, “This isn’t about me.”

No, it isn’t.  It’s about your ancestors.  Your very, very, VERY white ancestors.

She also said that she released the results because, “I see now that confidence in government is at an all-time low.  And I believe that one way we try to rebuild confidence is through transparency.”

Even better than that, in your case: translucency!

And so, I tip my hat to you, Elizabeth Warren.  After I have done my best for almost a year to mock you at every turn, you have put my feeble mockery to shame with your own towering act of self-be-clownery.

I am tempted to say that this whole charade boomeranged on you.  But I have too much respect for the aboriginal people who invented the boomerang to engage in such a gross act of cultural appropriation.

So I will just say, “Liar, liar, deerskin dress on fire.”

Now please tell me where I can go to contribute to your 2020 presidential campaign.”

 

The other great story was Kavanaugh’s escape from the slanderous lefty mob who almost succeeded in Borking him.  After following his tortuous path, I wrote a final, relieved column after his confirmation:

“Can you picture the joy around stately Simpson Manor today?  After several weeks of being furious and worried and depressed as a manifestly good man was demonized and smeared, I started to enjoy a trickle of good news this past week.

First, Creepy Porn Lawyer’s client turns out to be a singularly unconvincing loon selling a story that dozens and dozens of upper class girls were gang raped over a period of months by dozens of upper class boys in a suburb of DC, and no one ever reported it.  When she gave four names of people who supposedly witnessed this, one denied it, two couldn’t be reached, and one was dead.

It’s a cliché for a reason: when your best witness is a dead guy, pull the fire alarm and run out of the court room.

Next, Ramirez turns out to be a partisan hack selling a story that she was black out drunk at a party, and there were genitals, and she wasn’t sure whose they were until she spent six days talking to her leftist hack lawyer, who – when not chasing ambulances – also specializes in helping people “recover” decades-old genital-related memories.

By the way, I went to high school and college with a ton of girls, and I tragically got to see almost none of them naked.  But if there’s a way I can go to the offices of Soros & Alinsky Esq.  and “recover” some memories in which I was actually bombarded by parade floats filled with female nudity, I’m in.

In fact, if I could please “recover” a memory of when 1983 Nena went to my senior prom with me, and sang “99 Luft Balloons” before coming home to the luxurious apartment I never had and having her lusty Germanic way with me, I’d pay double.  Throw in that time I ravaged late 1970s Farrah Fawcett, and I will sign over my 401K.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: Ramirez’s story collapsed like a house of imaginary cards.

At the same time, Ford’s story grew weaker too.  All of the witnesses she named said they didn’t know what she was talking about.  Her story that she was terrified of flying was undermined by the fact that she has 500,000 frequent flier miles.  Also, for the last six years she has had a summer job as a wing-walker on an old biplane in a barnstormer act in Branson, Missouri.

Next up, the MSM was on the case, and dug up perhaps the most damning anti-Kavanaugh account yet.  It turns out that Brett Kavanaugh – when he wasn’t drugging high school girls and defending his pimping turf in vicious running gun battles with Bishop Don “Magic” Juan (Google him) – was also involved in a donnybrook in a bar near Yale.

That’s right.  He allegedly threw ice at a guy.  You may remember it from all of those “The Cube Heard Round the World” stories that dominated the headlines in 1985.

This was the last straw for my wife, who is, as many of you know, of Norwegian descent.  Until then, she had been trying to keep an open mind.  But when she heard about the ice throwing allegations, she was triggered.

Because, as she explained to me in a tearful conversation, the Norwegian people have long been tormented by racial slurs from their less blonde, less attractive, shorter, swarthier neighbors.

Growing up, she had heard it all:  Tundra Monkeys.  Glacierbacks.  Frosties. Fjord-billies.  Svens.

But the most painful of all was the “I” word:  Ice-chuckers.

(By the way, don’t kid yourself: Lizzie Warren has heard those same, hateful words.  She might say that she’s been called “squaw” or “wigwam whacko,” but she’s got “fjord-billy” written all over her.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

So the anti-Kavanists lost my wife.

My spirits were rising as the FBI report came back the only way it possibly could, given that the alleged bad behavior happened at an undetermined location, in an unknown year, and with no corroboration. And also was totally made up.

Then Cocaine Mitch called for a cloture vote, and Lindsay Graham’s evil twin continued to dazzle us all.  When a bunch of entitled know-nothing college kids at a genteel event at the Atlantic started booing him, he snapped, “Oh, boo yourself.”

Which, for the old Lindsay Graham, would have been the equivalent of jumping to his feet, roaring, “DIE  COMMIE SCUM!” and spraying the crowd with small arms fire from a belt-fed weapon.

Also, when some embittered termagant harassing him in a hallway called out, “If he would take a polygraph this would all be over,” Lindsay came back with a professional-quality retort, which I am not making up.  He looked back over his shoulder without missing a beat, and said, “Why don’t we dunk him in water and see if he floats.”

Boom!

Finally Friday comes, and Susan Collins speaks on the Senate floor in that shaky, Kate-Hepburn-in-a-bumper-car way that has always driven me nuts, but is now just adorable.  After a 45-minute speech laying out the manifest reasons to be disgusted by the left’s smear campaign (reportedly written by her lead staffer, Harold Obvious), she supports Kavanaugh.

Twelve seconds later, Joe Manchin shoulder-rolls to the nearest microphone, gives a clavicle-snapping forearm shiver to the septuagenarian who was explaining that we should always believe all women, and grabs the mike, shouting, “Me too!  Me too!  I’m voting for Kavanaugh too!”

So I grab the front paws of a startled Cassie the Wonder Dog and dance her around my living room, singing, “Oh Happy Day,” but replacing the line, “When Jesus washed my sins away,” with, “When Lindsay cleared the goons away!”

To vicariously experience that with me, google “Ray Charles sings Oh Happy Day,” and watch the video.  It was just like that, except with a lot less dashikis, and one confused and excited Aussie shepherd.

So Saturday comes, and I DVR the usual half-dozen college football games, but also the coverage of the Kavanaugh vote and aftermath on all 6 networks.  I am going to slowly work my way through all of that video between now and Christmas, savoring every profanity-filled chant and misspelled sign and red-faced tantrum from the hordes of lefty louts who descended on Washington to celebrate “Political Impotence Fest ’18.”

In the meantime, I’ve got my snacks arranged around me in my recliner.  I’m having a foot-long schadenfreude sandwich with a side of Cheetos (because the Dems tried to cheat, get it?), and I’ll be washing it down with a flagon of Leftist Tears, vintage 2016.

With ice. Delicious, never-been-thrown ice.

That reminds me: Just-ice Kavanaugh.

Ha! Crank it up!    “Oh happy day…”

 

0-0-0

That was 2018, through my sarcastic eyes.  Next up: my first column of all-new material in this target-rich environment of 2019.  To read past columns, or to gaze in wonder at the Christmas picture of Cassie the Wonder Dog, go to Martinsimpsonwriting.com.